In general, a color developer for a silver halide color photographic material is a concentrated composition in order to reduce the cost of transportation thereof, to facilitate handling thereof, and to reduce the cost of packaging materials, and such is diluted with water at use.
Also, a concentrated color developer composition is split into few parts, each a concentrated component, to facilitate the concentration and to improve the stability of each component as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,615,572, 3,814,606, 3,574,619, 4,501,812 and 4,232,113, JP-A-61-264343 and JP-A-51-26543 (the term "JP-A" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application").
A conventional concentrated color developer composition for color prints is generally split into four concentrated parts comprising an alkali agent, a preservative, benzyl alcohol, and a color developing agent, respectively, as each main component. However, recently, for the purpose of reducing cost, a three-part construction of the concentrated color developer composition has been employed by combining benzyl alcohol and a color developing agent in a same part.
However, it has been found that in the case of three part constitution, benzyl alcohol reacts with the color developing agent in the part where both components are present to form compounds reducing the storage stability of images formed, which results in greatly reducing the storage stability of the images obtained by processing color photographic materials.
As an example of such a reaction, a presumptive reaction mechanism of benzyl alcohol and a color developing agent (CD-3) is shown below. ##STR2##